This disclosure relates to flash lamps, imaging systems using flash lamps, and more particularly, image-drivable flash lamps and imaging systems using the same.
Flash fusing is desirable for high speed printing but is quite energy intensive. Flash fusing can use a flash lamp. Such flash lamps are commonly configured as long tubes using reflective optics to transmit as much light as possible into a flat illumination field. A driver circuit for such a flash lamp uses a fast discharge, large valued capacitor to drive the flash lamp. However, such capacitors and their related power supplies can be difficult to manufacture and thus can be expensive. Moreover, the design of a flash lamp tends to compromise between uniformity of illumination and system cost.
Furthermore, such flash lamps indiscriminately illuminate a substrate. As a result, non-imaged regions of the substrate are heated and dried out unnecessarily as there is not marking material present to absorb the energy from the flash lamp.